A PATHOLOGIST LOOKS AT HEALING
Natural, Miraculous, Spiritual
By Dr. David Powell
Powell Charity Trust. 140 pages. £7.50
ISBN 978 0 956 233 615
Available from 7 Maes Bryglass, Peniel, Carmarthen SA32 7HF
Health and healing can be perplexing topics for doctors as well as lay people. The pastoral implications are many. How should we comfort sick people? How should we pray for them — and with them? Should we encourage them to expect miracles?
These questions have weighed heavily on Dr. David Powell throughout his long life and we should be most grateful to him for giving us the distillate of his wisdom in this highly readable and thought-provoking book. The author qualified in medicine back in 1952 and went on to become a Consultant Pathologist in Bridgend, collecting an MA in Philosophy and Healthcare along the way. He has maintained contact with many denominations over the years though invitations for him to preach, and has previously written a book on the Psalms.
20 years ago, Dr. Powell wrote to me about miraculous healing, having been asked to review a book by a Christian doctor on the subject, which disturbed him a great deal. The book described a number of cases held to be miraculous, yet Powell found that these stories were often anecdotal and third-hand. He wrote: ‘I read each new book on this subject hoping to find help where Scripture and experience are difficult to reconcile. This book’, he said tellingly, ‘did not help’. Perhaps, however, it was the inspiration for him to write this much better book, which is carefully measured and is, to my mind, the best book I have read on this difficult subject.
Powell takes the reader through questions about being ‘normal’, the nature of disease, the ambiguities of prognosis, the process of ageing and the business of dying. This sets the scene for an exploration of biblical, historical and contemporary healings. The book is illustrated with quotations, which are full of interest from his own wide reading — secular and medical, historical and contemporary. He grasps the nettle of miracle claims and puts them into the wider perspective of what we should expect as Christians in terms of illness, suffering and death. This book should inform our prayers and aid our pastoral counselling, as we seek to come alongside others in their sickness in the care of Christ.
